Tag Archives: collaboration

A guy is sitting at home when he hears a knock at the door. He opens the door and sees a snail on the porch. He picks up the snail and throws it as far as he can. Three years later there’s a knock on the door. He opens it and sees the same snail. The snail says: ‘What the hell was that all about?’…………..Boom!

Three guys stranded on a desert island find a magic lantern containing a genie, who grants them each one wish. The first guy wishes he was off the island and back home. The second guy wishes the same. The third guy says: ‘I’m lonely. I wish my friends were back here.’

Two of the funniest jokes of all time, according to a team of researchers at Oxford University, who put them to a group of students at the London School of Economics and asked them to rate them out of ten. The jokes were from a pre-selected list of course, which makes the exercise less than useless, but nevertheless, jokes, and the ability to tell them, have been a part of our popular culture since God worried that Adam would be forever lost in the Garden because men hate to ask for directions, and most jokes are just another form of storytelling, which is at the heart of learning and teaching. Right?

How often, as a teacher, have you recognised in a young person the ability to tell a good story, to hold an audience rapt for minutes on end without script or prompt, and yet were never quite sure how the talent could be developed and nurtured? Well, fear not, because an outlet for that creativity is about to present itself, in the shape of a joint project from the BBC and the National Literacy Trust.

‘Comedy Classroom – Having A Write Laugh’will officially launch on the 19th of April, and it isn’t just for extroverts. The project organisers are calling on teachers across the UK to get their students writing comedy – whether it be stand-up, sketch-writing or simply photo captions. And being the BBC, they have a huge collection of resources to help you on your way.

Footnote: For those teachers who think that telling jokes isn’t real learning, or for those who simply like ticking boxes, here are some of the literacy outcomes which may be enhanced by undertaking such an endeavour. Have fun, but be careful not to overdo it. Learning is a serious business, after all!

Speaking:

Take a role within group discussions.

Communicate clearly and confidently with an audience.

Verbally evaluate the work of themselves and others.

Be able to participate in discussions and presentations.

Demonstrate they can gain, maintain and monitor the interest of the listener(s).

Be able to discuss words and phrases that capture the reader’s interest and imagination.

Reading:

Comment on the differences between spoken and non-spoken text.

Consider why texts can change to be applied to specific audiences.

Be able to prepare comedy pieces to read aloud and to perform, showing understanding through intonation, tone, volume and action.

Demonstrate an ability to recognise different forms of comedy writing.

Be able to assess the effectiveness of their own and others’ writing and suggest improvements.

Writing:

Communicate meaning, adapting their style where necessary.

Organise their ideas in an easy to understand, coherent way.

Demonstrate an appropriate level of spelling, punctuation and grammar.

Demonstrate they can draft and edit to improve their work as well as critique others’.

Be able to plan, draft, edit and proofread.

Be able to use relevant strategies to build vocabulary, grammar and structure.

I know that many of you who regularly read this blog are engaged in one way or another in trying to turn the vision of Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence into practical reality in schools and classrooms across Scotland, whether you are a class teacher or a school manager or working to support teachers in some capacity. If you are currently struggling with what a 21st century curriculum might look like, how you might organise the school day more efficiently, how young people prefer to learn, how learning could be more collaborative or more active or more relevant or more contextualised, how you might make use of new technologies, how you might involve the local community more, or what young people think ‘learning the basics’ means, you could do a lot worse than listen to this group of youngsters describing what learning in the 21st century means to them. They aren’t Scottish, and I’m pretty sure they won’t be aware of Curriculum for Excellence, but for me they are describing almost perfectly the spirit of the authors of that curriculum blueprint. They are from Ringwood School in Hampshire, which just happens to be the school where a good friend of mine, Andy Wallis, has recently been appointed Subject Leader in Media Studies. Excellent news for Andy, and as those of you who know Andy will agree, very good news for the school. This was ringwoodmedia‘s entry for the ESSA Manifesto for Change Competition in 2009.

In his latest book, We-Think, Charles Leadbetter argues that if the 20th Century was one of mass production and mass consumption, the 21st Century will be one of mass innovation and collaboration, the sharing of ideas being the currency on which our future prosperity depends:-

“In the economy of things you are identified by what you own – your land, house, car. In the economy of ideas that the web is creating, you are what you share – who you are linked to, who you network with and which ideas, pictures, videos, links or comments you share. The biggest change the web will bring about is in allowing us to share with one another in new ways and particularly to share ideas.”

At least two questions immediately come to mind. If the new economy is about sharing, what is it that is going to encourage people to share and to give away, rather than trying to cash in on their ideas and maximise their profit, according to the natural laws of self-preservation, natural human tendencies to self-interest etc etc. And in a world where it is rapidly becoming easier to organise on a global scale, what is going to prevent individuals and organisations from using the power of the internet for destructive rather than constructive purposes?

On the first issue Leadbetter is optimistic. It’s not that he believes we-think will entirely replace the market-driven economy but rather that there will be a balance between market and non-market ways of organising the networked economy. In other words, individuals and organisations will survive according to their ability to sell and to share freely their ideas in the right proportions, a mix of collaboration and commerce, community and corporation. He believes that what motivates people above all else is not wealth but the quality of the relationships they are able to develop, alongside a sense of worth and a recognition of their talents, especially by their peers. This is threatening to traditional corporations with hierarchical structures, which operate on the basis of status and authority within the organisation rather than the creativity of individuals, and in the next few years we will see an increasing struggle between this dysfunctional world where decisions are made for us rather than with us and an alternative world in which we are, in the words of Pat Kane, “players”, where we are engaged and participating fully in the process of our own lives.

The challenge, according to the author, is to create a sense of order and security without undermining our capacity for sharing, for sharing can also spread diseases, infections and viruses, ideas and identities can be stolen. Furthermore, those who have top-down control, whether private corporations or governments, will fight to retain it. However, he believes that within organisations managers and professionals will struggle to retain power based on privileged access to information as those they govern become less deferential, acquiring their own voices and finding their own information. Secondly, more forms of peer-to-peer control, including surveillance, will provide the transparency needed to provide the security we all seek. We will get used to rating one another and being rated by our peers – something which is currently an accepted form of self-regulation in the scientific community but which will spread to many other walks of life. Finally, Leadbetter argues, we will have to encourage and develop in people more self-control so that they use their increasing technological power more responsibly. Enter the role of education and educators. He puts it succinctly like this:-

“That means, at the very least, children learning the skills and norms of media literacy and responsibility; learning to question and challenge information as well as copy and paste it.” Reassuringly, this has echoes of the following statement from the new Literacy and English framework in Curriculum for Excellence:-

To help me develop an informed view, I am exploring the techniques used to influence my opinion. I can recognise persuasion and assess the reliability of information and credibility and value of my sources.

Never has the role of the teacher been more important in guiding and supporting young people as they develop that “informed view” for themselves as independent learners and thinkers.